Episode Transcript
Rob Broadfoot 0:19
All right, episode three. Here we go.
We’re back.
Don Mock 0:22
We’re back. It’s a new year. It’s a new, exciting opportunity to talk about advertising and design.
Rob Broadfoot 0:28
That’s right. And I think before we forget, let’s let our legions of fans know where they can find us. They can find us at mocktheagency.com of course, or you can find us on the socials.
Don Mock 0:41
Yeah, what’s your social handle, Rob?
Rob Broadfoot 0:43
mocktheagency. @mocktheagency. Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook.
Don Mock 0:48
For sure. Yeah, give us.. cyber snoop us. Take a look.
Rob Broadfoot 0:58
We’re not hard to find.
Don Mock 0:52
Yeah. And shoot us some feedback. We’d love to hear what everybody has to say about everything. So, at the time, we’re sitting down to chat about, you know, podcasts and what not right now. Right. It’s the new year, 2023. I thought it might be fun to do a little topic on what was your favorite holiday present, we’ll say Christmas present, right? But what’s your favorite seasonal sort of holiday present that you’ve ever received, right? And then maybe tie that into favorite project we’ve ever worked on, right? For one of our clients or or maybe even not even a client just favorite project you’ve ever worked on? And it could could be a personal thing, I guess, theoretically. Okay. So who wants to go first? You want me to go first?
Rob Broadfoot 1:28
Yeah, why don’t you go first with favorite present.
Don Mock 1:30
Favorite present, okay, it’s gonna be super cliche, but favorite present I’ve ever gotten was a bicycle. So I mean, call it 1950. You’re already shaking your head. It’s super boring. But the reason why…
Rob Broadfoot 1:40
No, i’m shaking my head because literally, it’s exactly what I was gonna talk about.
Don Mock 1:43
Yours is a bicycle too, wow.
Rob Broadfoot 1:44
Yeah, so let’s do two bicycle stories.
Don Mock 1:46
Okay, well, okay, bicycle story number one is: I used to go to grandma and grandpa’s house for Christmas morning, right? My grandma, grandpa, we all lived in the same town, back in California. And so go over there we go through Christmas open all the presents the traditional socks, underwear, all the boring stuff from grandma and grandpa, right? Christmas is over. Everything’s done. I got whatever toys I got Star Wars figures or Legos or whatever, right? Back in the day. And my grandpa is like, hey, Donald, I need your help out here in the backyard. You need to come out and help and I’m like, ugh, it’s like Christmas, I’m having to do chores now with my grandpa. He wants me to come out to his greenhouse and do something with you know, whatever, ugh. He was a big gardener and whatnot. And so it’s the traditional, I go out to the greenhouse and there is a specialized, wasn’t the Rockhopper. It was the Stumpjumper, specialized mountain bike – Stumpjumper. And I like totally lost it and was like, oh my god, this is amazing. And you couldn’t get me off the bicycle that entire day. I mean, it was California, so it wasn’t like freezing cold. And their backyard was humongous. I mean, it was acreages back then. So I was just literally making my own little courses and riding my mountain bike around – totally insane.
Rob Broadfoot 2:46
That was when mountain bikes first sort of hit hard. The specialized owned, the
Don Mock 3:07
They owned the market.
Rob Broadfoot 3:08
They owned it. Stumpjumper, ya and Rockhopper.
Don Mock 3:09
I think it had like, it had like shocks, or it had like a shock, in the like gooseneck or something. There was something going on with the shocks
Rob Broadfoot 3:17
They had shocks on the forks,
Don Mock 3:18
Is that where it was? Okay, yeah. It was incredible. Addendum to the story is that unfortunately, that bike was stolen.
Rob Broadfoot 3:23
Oh no.
Don Mock 3:23
So that’s a downer. Yeah, it was left unlocked in my own backyard. Somebody went into the backyard, stole my bike. This was years and years and years later, sure. And left their jalopy. They left their broken down, busted up bike and stole my bike. That’s random, I wasn’t expecting to share that part of the story.
Rob Broadfoot 3:41
Was that what made you start road biking? Because I always, I know you were a road biker?
Don Mock 3:49
Great question. Now my dad was a big cyclist. I mean, huge, huge cyclists. So yeah, after that, I mean, you know, no one wants to ride bikes with their dad or whatever, that kind of stuff. So I mean, it wasn’t till later, end of high school and whatnot, that I really started road cycling with my dad for a while. But yeah, so super cliche bicycle story number one. I’m gonna need to hear your bicycle story.
Rob Broadfoot 4:09
Yeah, honestly, I was really thinking bicycle story because mine goes back farther. So I was born in the 70s. But grew up an 80s kid, right. So at the time, it was kind of mid 80s. I couldn’t tell you the year, early to mid 80s. But at the time, – freestyling like BMX freestyle – BMX had always been popular, in the early 80s but then it just, you had this new wave of people riding bikes. Freestylers.
Don Mock 4:35
Yeah. What was the main guy’s name?
Rob Broadfoot 4:38
Well, there was a ton of them, you had GT, you had Haro, you had all those guys.
Don Mock 4:43
Wasn’t there a guy’s name start with an M? wasn’t there an M?
Rob Broadfoot 4:45
You’re thinking about Dave Mirra. But he was later,
Don Mock 4:47
But that was later. That’s much later. Much, much later. Yeah.
Rob Broadfoot 4:50
So, me and my buddy Grant, who was my neighborhood buddy, we started kind of getting into freestyling and I had some crappy little bike and I wanted a Haro sport.
Don Mock 5:02
Okay.
Rob Broadfoot 5:03
Which at the time was a lot of a lot of money.
Don Mock 5:04
A lot of money.
Rob Broadfoot 5:05
I didn’t think there was any chance that I was gonna gonna get.
Don Mock 5:08
Yep.
Rob Broadfoot 5:09
There was no big reveal. I mean, it was the traditional
Don Mock 5:12
The bike is under the tree
Rob Broadfoot 5:13
Oh look, there’s a bow on the handlebars.
Don Mock 5:14
Oh, really? Okay.
Rob Broadfoot 5:15
So not a big reveal, but like I flipped out.
Don Mock 5:17
Okay.
Rob Broadfoot 5:18
And then that launched this crazy just like love affair for freestyling. And we would go up, me and Grant would go to, we take our bikes up to, there’s a bike shop, for all you Atlanta people, a bike shop up in Marietta called Freeflight.
Don Mock 5:32
Shoutout.
Rob Broadfoot 5:35
Shoutout to Freeflight. And we would go see Hutch, GT, Haro, they would all put on demos.
Don Mock 5:40
At the store?
Rob Broadfoot 5:42
Yeah, at the store.
Don Mock 5:42
That’s incredible.
Rob Broadfoot 5:43
But it was so funny. If you go look, you can look up all the old videos on YouTube. But this was before you had half pipes.
Don Mock 5:49
Yeah.
Rob Broadfoot 5:50
No one had figured out to put two quarter pipes together, so you just had one quarter pipe at the end of a long runway. And guys would do that and do all the street stuff. And it ended with the last freestyle trick that I tried to do. It was about three years ago. When I was up in Newport, Rhode Island.
Don Mock 6:10
No way.
Rob Broadfoot 6:10
Yeah, and we had city bikes. And I tried to do a trick and totally busted an elbow.
Don Mock 6:17
Yeah, that’s like wrecking your little scooters or whatever.
Rob Broadfoot 6:21
There may have been a couple of beers involved that day, I don’t know.
Don Mock 6:22
That’s fantastic.
But anyway, yeah, that’s been my
What’s the addendum to that bike story, though? Mine was stolen. What happened to that bike?
Rob Broadfoot 6:28
What happened to that bike? That’s a great question. I don’t even know if could tell you. I think I just grew out of it, and it may have been a hand-me-down to somebody, some other kid in the neighborhood.
Don Mock 6:38
Yeah, well, a bike is an amazing gift. I mean, there may be cliches, but the freedom associated with learning how to ride your bike is incredible. I remember when I gave my first child a bike, we did the string, the traditional string thing, right? Where it’s like, have you heard of this, where you, you basically use like an entire roll of string. And you weave it through the whole house and outside and around the thing and you got to like, undo, it’s like an obstacle course kind of thing. You got to like, you know, get to the end of the string, right. And so I mean, we had, I don’t know, tied all these different roles of string together and it went all through the backyard and went out to upstairs, down all this crazy stuff or whatever. And then there was a bike at the end of the string.
Rob Broadfoot 7:16
I just remember growing up and we had our little gang of neighborhood dudes. And we would
Don Mock 7:23
You’re a biker gang.
Rob Broadfoot 7:24
Yeah, we were a biker gang. And we were right behind McDonald’s on Roswell road. And we would go over there and we would just ride our bikes up and down Roswell road. For I mean, eight hours.
Don Mock 7:35
It’s awesome.
Rob Broadfoot 7:36
Yeah, it was great.
Don Mock 7:37
Good times.
Rob Broadfoot 7:38
It was great.
Don Mock 7:38
Speaking of good times, I don’t know how to transition over to favorite projects? We did favorite bikes. Do you want to go first on favorite projects?
Rob Broadfoot 7:46
Yeah, I’ll go first.
Don Mock 7:47
Okay, well, I hope you don’t pick mine. Because maybe we’ll have the same moment again.
Rob Broadfoot 7:50
I don’t think it will because I didn’t work on it.
Don Mock 7:51
Uh oh. Oh, man. Okay.
Rob Broadfoot 7:54
Uh oh.
And I was trying to think why it was my favorite. I think in the spirit of adventure, that’s my segue from freestyling on the bike. I got a chance to work on, kind of as a hired gun, to work on the launch of a video game called Splinter Cell. Which is one of the Tom Clancy franchise games. And we had, funny enough, we had no no budget to work with.
Don Mock 8:23
Yeah.
Rob Broadfoot 8:23
Which is surprising given how successful that was. And so we came up with all of these sort of little wacky, video ideas. And one of those was we were going to shoot, we were going to shoot at night. And we needed like, I had this office space, and we’re gonna kind of run around the office space, and we needed artillery.
Don Mock 8:46
Yes.
Rob Broadfoot 8:46
So, I have a good friend of mine who is a former police officer. Who will remain nameless.
Don Mock 8:53
Yeah, of course. Everyone has to be anonymous in all of these podcasts.
Rob Broadfoot 8:56
Yeah, somehow we talked him into bringing over a couple of guns.
Don Mock 9:00
A duffel bag full of guns?
Rob Broadfoot 9:01
Well, I mean, at the time, we were like, hey, can you bring over a couple of guns? We want to shoot this video.
Don Mock 9:07
Yeah, exactly.
Rob Broadfoot 9:08
We had no license to do this. We had no business doing this.
Don Mock 9:11
Sure.
Rob Broadfoot 9:12
So my buddy shows up.
Don Mock 9:14
Just Moxie, that’s all we had, the Moxie to do it.
Rob Broadfoot 9:15
Yeah.
Don Mock 9:16
Who’s got the guns?
Rob Broadfoot 9:17
So my buddy shows up with a duffel bag of guns and lays out on this giant silver commercial kitchen table that we had, like I don’t know, there had to be 10 or 12 guns.
Don Mock 9:28
Lots of guns.
Rob Broadfoot 9:29
And like, not like, AK47’s.
Don Mock 9:31
Like legit, like legit guns.
Rob Broadfoot 9:33
Like AR-15’s, like legit guns. And we’re like, wow, this is gonna be great. So the sun starts to go down we’re waiting until the shooting hour.
Don Mock 9:41
And we’re shooting what, like teaser videos?
Rob Broadfoot 9:43
These are like little, yeah, exactly, like little campaign teaser videos. Because it’s a first person shooter game. It was sort of that general idea, in this really cool location. So idiots we are, we are running around the complex, like with real guns,
Don Mock 9:43
I think we can all see where this is going
Rob Broadfoot 10:03
pointing them at, not at one another, of course.
Don Mock 10:05
Yeah, but you’ve got a guy on the other end with a camera, presumably.
Rob Broadfoot 10:07
We’re running around with a camera, and we’re doing all sorts of things and climbing walls, and it was so much fun because, I mean, the work ended up cool. It was great. It was successful. It was a fun campaign.
Don Mock 10:10
Yeah.
Rob Broadfoot 10:11
But I think it was fun for me because it was like being a kid again. Fortunately, nobody called the active police on us.
Don Mock 10:25
Okay, that’s where I was worried this was going.
Rob Broadfoot 10:27
I know, it seemed like it was going there, and it probably should have gone there, but it didn’t. We somehow got away with it. But I think it was just that. It was that idea that, and I remember thinking to myself, like, I can’t believe I get to do this and get paid to run around and play army.
Don Mock 10:43
Yeah.
Rob Broadfoot 10:27
And it was that idea of like, hey, work can be really fun, and like, for sure, blend, blend the two together and have fun with it. So that was probably one of my favorite projects. Not because the work ended up being so great, but I think just the production of it, and the fun time I had making it.
Don Mock 10:59
Well, it’s interesting that we’re business partners. And I’ve been for a number of years, because we both have bicycle stories. And actually, my favorite project involves guns as well, which is so unexpected for me, right?
Rob Broadfoot 11:12
It is.
Don Mock 11:13
I was transitioning, and you can jump in and help share the story, because you probably know where this is going. But I think actually one of my favorite projects and again, similar mindset in regards to limited budget sometimes maximizes creativity, right?
Rob Broadfoot 11:26
Right.
Don Mock 11:27
Because you’ve got to really stretch your dollar, you’ve got to really determine what’s the best way to get this thing done, right? But we were tasked with helping to do press kits and launch a documentary movie, right? The documentary movie was called trigger, the ripple effect of gun violence.
Rob Broadfoot 11:43
Yep.
Don Mock 11:43
Right, and it wasn’t a pro gun. It wasn’t anti gun. It wasn’t anything, it was just literally a straight down the middle documentary about gun violence in America and sort of why it is and how it’s come to be and sort of, you know, just talking about it in general, right. And so we were tasked with doing the press kit for all this and sort of launching and helping to sort of amplify some of the PR movements for it. Right? So the idea that, that you probably came up with quite honestly, you know, collaboratively or whatnot, was, we designed all of the collateral we designed the press kits, the pocket folders, all the inserts, the posters, all the different things, right. And I think we printed, how many of these things did we print, like 10,000 of these things? How many do we print? It doesn’t even matter.
Rob Broadfoot 12:26
I don’t remember, but it was a lot.
Don Mock 12:27
We printed a lot of these things, right. Then we collated everything together.
Rob Broadfoot 12:32
Right.
Don Mock 12:33
And then we took it to a gun range and shot everything.
Rob Broadfoot 12:36
Do you know where we got the guns?
Don Mock 12:39
We got the guns from the same guy.
Rob Broadfoot 12:40
From the same guy that did the project I talked about.
Don Mock 12:42
Yeah, exactly.
Rob Broadfoot 12:43
He’s our arms dealer, pretty much.
Don Mock 12:44
That’s why I’m saying it’s hilarious that we’re business partners, because we both have the same, it’s like, two halves of the same mind, right? At times. So yeah, he provided the artillery again.
Rob Broadfoot 12:54
Right
Don Mock 12:55
And we brought it to the gun range, and then we shot all of our excellently designed, printed and collated work with guns. And didn’t really care if it was legible or not, or what was happening, because when the bullet went through, the press packets and whatnot, it kind of burned and like fused everything together.
Rob Broadfoot 13:14
Yeah.
Don Mock 13:14
It was crazy, right? So when you assemble it, you’re like, whoa, like you really, you know, and then it was all about trying to find, this sounds crazy to say out loud, but trying to find the guns that provided the best, what do you call that? Like, flare out the back?
Rob Broadfoot 13:28
The best bullet, we had to find the right calliber.
Don Mock 13:29
The best bullet hole, right? Yeah, it was totally insane. And then we obviously mailed everything. The direct mail component of everything went out in clear envelopes so everybody could see it, right. So again, it’s one of my most favorite things because it’s so memorable. And it’s for me, you know, in terms of the journey, but also so highly impactful, of the work really tying in to the movie and how everything was really, really unified together.
Rob Broadfoot 13:56
Yeah.
Don Mock 13:58
I mean, I’ve got, you know, we both have tons, and tons, and tons of other projects. Like I never get sick of seeing anything we ever do out in the real world. Like when we go to the grocery store, and I see things that we’ve designed or whatever, I still always get a kick out of that.
Rob Broadfoot 14:10
Right.
Don Mock 14:11
But I don’t know, I just remember this was a really, really fun one. And really like, whoa, I can’t believe we just did this. And also too, we like sold it. I remember having that phone call with the client, which was like, here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna shoot everything with guns.
Rob Broadfoot 14:24
Yeah, but there’s some times that like, with that one, I remember when we were talking about the idea, we were like, okay, well, we can graphic design a kind of a bullet hole in it. There were a few different ways to think about production.
Don Mock 14:36
That’s true.
Rob Broadfoot 14:36
And the obvious, obvious answer was if there’s a way to do it, we have to really shoot it, because authenticity is critical.
Don Mock 14:45
Yeah, it was crazy.
Rob Broadfoot 14:45
The fake bullet hole doesn’t work as well. It’s not nearly as impactful.
Don Mock 14:49
Yeah, correct. Then also, too, we brought everybody from the office to the gun range.
Rob Broadfoot 14:53
Yeah, it ended up being a fun company outing.
Don Mock 14:55
Then everybody ended up shooting our own work, which is really kind of bizarre in a weird way.
Rob Broadfoot 15:00
There’s some times where, because I remember when we talked about the concept with the client, they were immediately like, well, of course.
Don Mock 15:07
Yeah.
Rob Broadfoot 15:07
Because it’s one of those, and it doesn’t happen all the time, but sometimes you land on an idea where you’re like, alright, pencils down like I think we just nailed it.
Don Mock 15:15
Yeah.
Rob Broadfoot 15:15
And the client’s like, yep, you guys nailed it.
Don Mock 15:17
Yeah, that was good.
Rob Broadfoot 15:17
So let’s do this. Let’s make sure that in the next week or so let’s put that piece up on the socials, and you guys can see.
Don Mock 15:24
It’s a good idea.
Rob Broadfoot 15:25
You can kind of see that.
Don Mock 15:26
It’s a good idea. It’s an oldie. It’s not that old, I guess. But that’s a fun one, yeah.
Rob Broadfoot 15:29
Yeah, that was a good one.
Don Mock 15:30
All right. Well, I think that’s it for today’s episode, right?
Rob Broadfoot 15:33
Yeah, I think so. I think that’s all we got. Well, thanks for tuning in everyone. Again, go find us at mocktheagency.com and on the socials. And you can check out some of our work and feel free to reach out and get in touch if you want to chat about work, or life or whatever. And also, before I forget, before we play our killer music outro, shout out to Kyler who’s one of our graphic designers affectionately referred to as Mr. C.
Don Mock 15:58
Mr. C.
Rob Broadfoot 15:59
He composed that music for us here in house so, great job on that.
Don Mock 16:03
All right, Mr. C. play us out.
Rob Broadfoot 16:05
Here we go.
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